What a Team, What a Run for Old Times

Well, Walt Disney gets the rights to this one. Bring a handkerchief. If you have tears, as the bard said, prepare to shed them now.

It’s the simple, heart-warming story of an old man and his horse. Two old men and a horse. What a part for Lionel Barrymore and Mickey Rooney! It’ll make “Broadway Bill” and “Black Beauty” look like comedies.

How’s this for a scenario that will tug at your heartstrings, set you to sobbing into your popcorn? There’s these two old pals, one of them this tough old ex-Marine who’s been training horses since he licked Hitler and Tojo and he makes a nice living but he’s never won The Big One and everywhere he goes he says people find out he trains horses and they say, “Have you ever won the Kentucky Derby?” and when he says, “No,” they figure he’s not a real trainer at all, just some guy with a big story that can’t be checked.

His best buddy is this little rider who’s won three Kentucky Derbies but not lately, in fact, not in 21 years, and everybody says behind his back, “Why don’t he quit riding those horses, he’s gonna hurt himself, and at his age he hurts the horses. Why doesn’t he know he can’t ride anymore?” He comes out in the public mind like some Mountain Rivera, the old fighter who should hang them up before he starts hearing bells, a “Requiem for a Heavyweight” character, still kidding himself he’s got it.

Nobody ever rode a race horse any better than William Lee Shoemaker, in fact, no one ever rode one as well. No one ever trained a horse better than Charlie Whittingham, but, when they showed up at Churchill Downs this week, everyone thought, “Well, this is kind of quaint,” a nice sentiment but that’s all. It was touching to see them. But, sad. Kind of like Jack Nicklaus still teeing it up in the Masters, unwilling to admit it was all over.

This was a young man’s game, too. This was a Gabby Hayes part, a sideshow, not the real drama. It was hard to take them serious. The press promptly numbered them among “The Sunshine Boys,” re-living past glories when they should be back in a rest home rocking a chair and living in the past.

Only the horse was young--but they wondered if he would be as sentimental as the rest of the world. Would a 54-year old gaffer be able to hold 1,200 pounds of brute force in the toughest test of horseflesh this side of the Charge of the Light Brigade?

Everybody wondered if the horse was so good, why the trainer didn’t put one of the young bulls of the track on his back, say, a Lafitt Pincay or an Eddie Delahoussaye?

But, that’s the way they do things in a world run by machines and polls and guidelines as cold and grim as a computer bank. That’s not the way pals do things. That’s not the way they do things in the world of Charlie Whittingham and Bill Shoemaker.

Take Shoemaker off the horse? Charlie Whittingham would look at you as if you asked him to shoot Santa Claus. Vote Communist. Burn the Flag. What kind of a classless, lousy, no-good tinsel phony would do a thing like that? A guy like that would welsh on a poker debt, cheat at golf, make a play for a pal’s sweetheart. Eat quiche. A real man wouldn’t even think of it. How would you like to be in a foxhole with a guy who would do a chicken lick thing like that to a buddy?

So, everyone said, That was a really lovely thing for Charlie to do and all that, but there goes the Kentucky Derby.

Hah!

Bill Shoemaker was winning Kentucky Derbies before some of these riders were even born. It’s never been a lucky race for him. Once he stood up in the irons before the finish, and usually he got saddled with some inflated California runner who would pack it in, so to say, when they started to throw curveballs at him. usually at the far turn.

Bill Shoemaker won more races than any rider who ever lived or probably ever will. Horses love Bill Shoemaker. He never abused a horse or filleted him to win a race in his life. In fact, he was such an effortless rider in his early days that the stewards used to want to rule him off for not riding like a guy leading a swarm of bees--except that he won.

He won 8,536 races on his way up to Saturday’s Kentucky Derby. The smart money said he wouldn’t make it 8,537 when the sun went down over the blue grass Saturday.

He lost a Kentucky Derby he should have won--but he won one he should have lost. In 1959, he slipped a tiring Tomy Lee past a stronger, fresher horse in the stretch, giving a riding lesson so artful that the chagrined other rider said he was fouled. He wasn’t. He was fooled, a one-letter difference.

Shoemaker won his fourth Kentucky Derby--and his 8,537th race--the same way that Nicklaus won his Masters or Archie Moore his fights. He knew what club to use and when to use it, what punch to throw and when to throw it. He knew where to be. And when to be there.

He gave it a ride you might come to expect from some fiery-eyed young Panamanian or some hell-for-leather kid out of the border bull rings.

Jimmy Kilroe, director of racing at Santa Anita, used to allude to what he called a predictable tactic of the older rider. “The married man’s position,” he called it. It called for a nice safe route around the whiplashing fields, well out from an ever-dangerous fence that has crippled more horseback riders than Geronimo’s Indians.

These Sunshine Boys got all the worst of it in Saturday’s Derby. With a horse that comes off the pace, they drew the No. 1 post. When the race started, Shoemaker got shuffled around and sideways like a canoe in a typhoon. He had to snatch the horse back to last before there was nothing left of either one of them but a hoofprint. Everyone said, See?! They couldn’t watch.

Shoemaker didn’t worry about it. He knew the race hadn’t started. He didn’t worry about the young hotshots breaking clocks on the front end or searing 45-second half-miles. He had plenty of horse left.

Also, plenty of rider.

At the head of the stretch, Shoemaker saw the opening, no wider than a banker’s smile. No place for a 54-year-old man on a half-ton of excited animal. It could have been like the Titanic’s iceberg, not the married man’s position, the widow-maker’s position.

Shoemaker never hesitated. He plunged his horse and himself through the jagged hole. He bet the hand. He raised the pot. He said, I’ll see your two and raise you two. He went for his six-shooter. He won the Kentucky Derby.

If that isn’t picture, sue me. If that isn’t “On Golden Pond” or “Mrs. Miniver” or every Judge Hardy picture or Judy Garland singing “Over the Rainbow,” I’m King Zog.

I got to go now before I start bawling. I always cry at sad movies. If this isn’t a love story, I hope I never hear one. All it needs is a part for Loretta Young. Or Shirley Temple. And a dog.

BILL SHOEMAKER’S DERBY WINNERS

YEAR WINNER MARGIN TIME ODDS 1955 Swaps 1 1/2 lengths 2:01 4/5 2.80 1959 Tomy Lee Nose 2:02 1/5 3.70 1965 Lucky Debonair Neck 2:01 1/5 4.30 1986 Ferdinand 2 lengths 2:02 4/5 17.70